After a short flight from
Frankfurt, I was greeted at the airport by cheerful MINI staff. As it
turned out, I had arrived with one of the German investigative teams so
we shared a taxi over to the hotel which was to be our home during the
investigation.
The hotel we were all to stay in was the luxurious Arts Barcelona, one
of the few hotelsproviding enough comfort to properly sooth an
investigator during the few hours a night you actually spend in your
room.
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The Arts Barcellona
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At the hotel, we pulled into a special side entrance devoted to the
investigation. Sam had pulled no stops with this one, enlisting the
help of MINI to take care of all the investigative teams called from all
over.
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Welcome to Mission MINI |
Parked outside the
entrace was a car very like Sam's missing car, reminding us to stay
vigilant! Good advice for the upcomoming few days.
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Entryway car |
Of course, with a
car this beautiful you can't keep people away for long - they seem drawn
like magnets. It's a wonder the thieves were able to get close enough
to steal Sam's car in the first place.
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Popular car |
Always being
careful, I checked the licence plat to be sure this was not, in fact,
Sam's car - hidden in the most obvious place of all! It turned out to
be clean.
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Entry Car Licence Plate |
Again, the car
served as a reminder of just why we're all here in Barcelona.
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Why we're here. |
| Once inside the hotel, more MINI
staff were on hand to help us register and provided us with official
MINI clothing (a jacket and a few shirts) for those investigators who
had not thought to wear clothing to the investigation (many of the most
brilliant investigators tend to be a little forgetful). In a curious
oversight, no pants were provided. |
Registration
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| After registering, I
checked into my room. The first thing to do is see what you can
observe from the room - and what can observe you. |
View from a room |
| A good view to observe a
roundabout and the marinia, but a little too easy to be seen from the
adjacent building - luckily the hotel provided thick shades. |
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Sweeping the room
for bugs I noticed a lot of nice art in the room. Fellow art lovers
helping with the case, I imagine.
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Hotel art |
This could come in
handy if I need to fight off a few swarthy men breakinginto my room in
the middle of the night.
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Nice details |
After a clean check,
I could relax for a little while and set up my investigative equipment.
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A room to hang your hat |
On schedule, I went
down to the lobby to meet the rest of the investigators from the USA as
well as our "Charlie" equivalent, James (hereafter referred to simply as
"James").
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Team meets for first time |
Now that all of the
investigators were together, it was time to head out to a local
restaurant to meet everyone else.
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Explaining the schedule |
Outsde of Oven, we
posed for a photo op. In these high-profile investigations you have to
deal with the press all the time.
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Team photo with James and Hildegaurd |
As was true of most
important meeting points for Mission MINI, a MINI was cleverly hidden at
the entrance to insure we had teh right location.
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Admiring car outside of Oven |
Inside of Oven
(anecodote - for a short time our team found it suspicious that the menu
had the word "Oven" in odd places and in bold - until we found out the
name of the restauraunt!), we proceed to talk to investigators from all
over the world. We even were being observed by our future team assitant
though we did not know it at the time.
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Winnie and future team assistant |
As befitting a group
of MINI investigators, Oven had style aplenty.
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Stylish Oven |
The food here was
quite amazing - if you're ever in , I reccomend the Kangaroo or the
Pumpkin Soup.
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A Mile of Style |
After talking to a
number of very interesting people (though nothing much relevant to the
case) we headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next day, so we
would have energy to spare for the investigation itself.
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Candles with a secret message... |
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